Archive for April, 2011

At the recent US House of Representatives Committee on Science Space and Technology climate hearing, the Republicans called Dr. John Christy as an expert witness testifying against the global warming consensus. Unfortunately, Christy spent his time repeating a long list of climate myths, including the common contrarian refrain that “climate model output does not match up to the real world”. Let’s examine this claim.

A tale of three climate indicators

Surface temperature observations are well within the range of model projections:

My recent post about long-term CO2 targets was rather doom-and-gloom: I concluded that we must phase out fossil fuels to keep the climate in the range that humans have experienced. The good news is that action on this scale is not only possible but surprisingly feasible.

The report that has been released only covers emissions from Stationary Energy (though it does refer to electrifying transport). Five future reports are planned on how to eliminate emissions from other sectors (Transport, Buildings, Land Use and Agriculture, Industrial Processes, and Replacing Fossil Fuel Export Revenue).

Why do it, and why now?

As I’ve explained here, to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” we must reduce CO2 to below 350 ppm. That necessitates a rapid transition to a zero-carbon economy.

A common approach is to define a quota of allowable future global emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C above predindustrial levels, and divide them up by nation per capita. At Australia’s current rate of emissions, we will use up our share of the global budget in just five years (the same goes for the US and Canada). This gives Australia about a decade to make the transition. Read the rest of this entry ?